In general, when an elastic foamed body is produced from a rubber latex, there has been employed a Dunlop method in which the air is blown into a liquid mixture obtained by adding a vulcanizing agent, an auxiliary and the like to a rubber latex to generate bubbles, an aqueous dispersion of sodium silicofluoride is added to the liquid mixture, fine bubbles are imparted to the liquid mixture by stirring the liquid mixture while adjusting the liquid mixture to be acidic, the liquid mixture is then solidified, and the solidified body thus obtained is heated. However, when an elastic foamed body is produced by the Dunlop method, it is difficult to obtain an elastic foamed body having a fine foam structure formed at the time of initiation of the solidification of the liquid mixture, since the fine bubbles are coupled with one another to form greater bubbles until the liquid mixture is solidified after the fine bubbles are imparted to the liquid mixture.
Hence, as an elastic foamed body having a fine bubble structure, there has been proposed a method for producing an elastic body having a cell structure, in which a liquid for preparing an elastic cell obtained by adding the air and sodium silicofluoride to a rubber latex solution is irradiated with a microwave to solidify the liquid for preparing an elastic cell, and then vulcanization is carried out (for example, see Patent Documents 1 and 2).
The elastic body having a cell structure obtained by the above-mentioned method has, for example, the number of cells of the cross section of 8 cells/mm2 or more, a 50% compressive stress of 1.0 N/cm2 or less and an apparent density of 0.150 g/cm3 or less. Therefore, the elastic body is excellent in flexibility and feel to a skin.
It is true that the above-mentioned elastic body is excellent in flexibility and feel to a skin. However, in recent years, it has been desired to develop an elastic foamed body which has rich texture and which is excellent in fitting property to a skin, application property of a powder and even powder application.